It is time...

[commadore]

I know Mike Baxter was a good ole' Vandy boy and a pretty dang good player in his time. I know he has been here less than a year. But dag gummit, it is time we go out and hire a REAL hitting coach. Our hitting has sucked for three years and is not getting better, but worse. Good teams do NOT strike out 10+ times every game. Good teams get hits. Good college teams hit somewhere int he .300 range or better. Surely there are coaches out there that we could entice to come here and teach some of these guys to quit doing what they are doing and hit the ball.
I know that is not the only problem, but it is a major one that I believe could be fixed with a coach that knows what he is doing.
It is time.

[Commodoredave]

No idea why we would take a chance on a hitting coach two years in a row. It simply hasn't worked. Quite frankly, we have failed these kids. Look at the junior class that was full of promise two years ago. Kaiser hitting .255, Paul .246, Jones .236, Scott .230, Infante .163, Grisanti .139. These guys were part of the #1 rated class in the country, and for the most part, they delivered as freshmen. Zero development since then.

Let's be honest here about the pitching coach. Scott Brown has failed to deliver as well. Sure he was the coach when Beede, Fulmer, and Buehler were winning a championship, but those were extraordinary talents. We have never really developed a guy that I can remember. Kyle Wright was a dominant freshman and finished 5-6 last year. On the current roster, Day and Raby are no better than they were as freshmen despite a lot of talent. Drake Fellows has leveled off over the past couple of months after showing tremendous promise last year. I don't even know what to say about the huge arms of Gillis, Schaller, Eder, et al, who have made zero progress. The sad part is that they are all plagued by the most basic failure of pitching- the inability to throw strikes. It will start to affect recruiting if we can't make kids better and get them drafted.

[fldore]

Our hitting has always been up and down. But this year definitely feels different. I don't know if it is Baxter or if there is something going on behind the scenes we arent privy to. Or if perhaps this class of recruits ultimately isn't as good as prior classes. Sometime the recruiting rankings dont pan out. The growth in strikeout rate the last few years has been alarming. And now we are on track to have more strikeouts than hits for the first time in Corbin's tenure. But then other things like the fall of Infante is just flat weird. Good freshman year. Improved last year. But then just fell off a cliff. Maybe you could understand a decline as pitchers catch up to your weaknesses and you have need to adjust. But you would expect that sometime in your freshman or soph year. Kinda like Paul. He had a great freshman year, came back down as a soph, but this year (while his avg isnt great) is OBP, SLG, HR, etc... are up from last year. So whatever pitchers started doing to him last year, he adjusted this year. Now his strikeout rate is up and maybe hasnt hit the level we thought he would but he is still a good hitter. anyways just kind of rambling. I think we just have to hope that this class of players was just one of those that didnt live up to the recruiting rankings.